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| The other thing that surprises me is the distinction that is made between the culture and transmitting the culture through education. Museums are thought of as cultural institutions and not as educational institutions. But I do not see any essential difference between the two descriptions. To me, the whole point of education is to transmit the culture, and museums can play an increasingly important role in this process. Therefore, they are basically educational institutions. It is a mistake to think that preserving the culture is distinct from transmitting it through education. So that what Ken said about the Exploratorium, I think, is true of all museums, whether they like to admit it or not, curators are educators. I've always been a very avid museum goer. I grew up in New York City with the Metropolitan Museum and the American Museum of Natural History and my family was peripherally involved in the beginning of the Museum of Modern Art. But my first official contact with the museum world occurred during the summer of 1966 when I was invited to present a paper at a conference in Burlington, Vermont, that was sponsored by the Office of Education and the | Smithsonian Institution. The proceedings of this conference were written up in a fine book edited by Eric Larabee. It was an exhilarating conference at which I made friends with many, many people who have remained friends more or less continually during these past 16 years. I would like to talk about two broad topics in response to being presented with this award. I want especially to talk about the remarkable extent to which other museums have influenced and shaped what has happened in developing the Exploratorium. But first, I want to discuss my own feelings about the general topic of exploration. One of the people that I met at the Burlington Conference was Albert Parr. I went to see him at the Museum of Natural History and he subsequently visited me at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. At that time I was merely hoping that we would get permission to use the building, yet he was most encouraging. He urged me to publish the introduction of my initial proposal for the Exploratorium. This introduction, "A Rationale for a Science Museum", presented the idea of using human perception as a starting point for exhibitry. | ||||